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The Smart Techie was renamed Siliconindia India Edition starting Feb 2012 to continue the nearly two decade track record of excellence of our US edition.

Social Networking opening new vistas in e-commerce

Jaya Smitha Menon
Monday, March 31, 2008
Jaya Smitha Menon
From a speculative beginning in 1999-2000 when dotcom companies selling all sorts of goods sprouted and perished, e-commerce has come a long way. The online shopping market is on a growth path with more and more users finding it a convenient and faster option. Vendio made its entry into the e-commerce solutions market early in 1998 with products and services to help e-commerce merchants reach their customers, manage transactions, and profitably grow business. In an exclusive interview with The Smart Techie, Rodrigo Sales, CEO of Vendio shares his views on the key trends in the fast growing e-commerce space.

What are the current trends in e-commerce?
Today, merchants are looking for more channels for selling their products. If you look back, five years ago ebay was the only cost effective platform for small and medium vendors. With the proliferation of comparative price listing sites, they are now showcasing their products in more than one platform. Another noticeable trend is that they are opening up online stores and are able to drive in traffic without any abnormal burden. The online store is becoming the center of e-commerce for these vendors. Few years back, having an online store was an expensive affair. They are using adwords campaigns and email marketing to grab the attention of the shoppers. The business intelligence tools are also helping the vendors to know where customers came from and what prompted them to buy, among other things. One of the major turning points has been the entry of e-commerce in social networking sites.

Witnessing the steady growth in the e-commerce space, we are planning to add more features and functionalities to our platform Dealio and make it a robust one.

That means there is a lot of change in the online consumer behavior. How do you define the online consumer behavior today?
Recently, the e-commerce space is capturing a different variety of consumers and the percentage is increasing steadily. With the penetration and increased use of Internet, consumers are adopting e-commerce and are finding it more convenient to shop in the online space. Today, the online shopping engines provide a great user experience. Moreover, consumers can also compare the prices in the space, without having to physically visit different stores to check the prices. Even the lack of trust factor, which was a major hurdle for the growth of e-commerce, is improving due to the strides taken by the online vendors to protect and secure the personal information provided by the consumers. The emergence of online pay channels like PayPal, the single point payment portal, also encourages consumers to have more trust in online shopping.


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